Memories

Recently I watched a hilarious YouTube parody of the song “Memories” from the Broadway musical “Cats.” (Check it out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzSaoN2LdfU) In this version, an older woman laments her loss of memory, how she can’t find the keys, doesn’t know why she went into a room and, well, other stuff that I can’t quite remember.

This experience got me thinking about my own memory. I decided that a memory is like a woman’s purse: You know that what you are looking for is in there somewhere, and if you root around long enough, eventually you will find it.

However, unlike a woman’s purse, you cannot simply dump out all of the contents and discard the useless stuff, like the Lifesavers stuck to a tissue. We seem destined to retain – if not find – everything, especially the stuff we really don’t need. For instance, unless I am going to be a contestant on “Jeopardy” and that’s the night they happen to have a category for “New York Yankees Line-ups From the Early 1960s,” there is a lot of Lifesaver-stuck-to-a-tissue type of information that I wish I could just toss out.

My mind is filled with useless information that prevents me from accessing the information I need or want. This issue can be embarrassing. When I worked, I would claim not to know Wendy from accounting, and my assistant would always say, “You know her. You’d know her if you saw her.” OK, let’s take it on blind faith that somehow I know who the hell Wendy from accounting is. On the other hand, it is amazing the amount of detail I can recall about a basketball game, like when Khadijah Rushdan passed between someone’s legs to Epiphanny Prince in the Auburn game and that Rutgers scored in the first 10 seconds of that game. Yet I not only cannot recall the score of that game, I usually can’t remember the score of the game I just watched. I just remember that my team won. If we get blown out by 40 points, I might just try to forget the whole thing.

If you are of a certain age, try going through your high school yearbook. In mine, written in neat penmanship over the countless pictures of girls with flips, are now meaningless phrases like, “2 good to 2 B forgotten,” signed by people who swear they will never forget French class. Really? And who is Karen, who said she’d never forget me? I wonder if she has, because I have no memory of her at all.

Once, a few years ago, I took a photography class taught in the local adult school by a man who was a teacher in my high school. I was proud that I even recognized his name. When he went through the class roster, he recognized mine, too, and asked me if I had him in 6th period chemistry (“had him” is not the bad thing you are thinking, OK?). 6th period chemistry? I took chemistry? And then he started asking me about people in the class, names I hadn’t heard in 40 years. Did I remember them? I barely remembered taking chemistry at all. And aside from salt being NaCl and water being H2O, I claim no knowledge of the periodic table, which, surprisingly, has never held me back as an adult.

My contention isn’t that I am losing my mind, but instead that it is so overstuffed with information that I cannot locate the things I need to know. I think we all have selective memory. That doesn’t mean we remember only those things we want to remember. Our mind just selects for us the stuff that will stay with us forever, whether we need to know it or not. Do I really need to know all the words to “Love Child” by the Supremes? That piece of information takes up valuable space that might better be used on something I need to know. I figure that there is only so much room in the purse that is my mind, and I wish I could dump out at least some of the useless contents. Why can’t I remember that I wanted to stop at the cleaners? Probably because my brain cells are saving themselves for something else, like memorizing what everyone orders at dinner, so when the waitress asks, “Who had the linguini?” I can point to the right person every time. But don’t ask me what I wore that night.

When I worked, I used to write down what I wore every day so I wouldn’t repeat the same thing at meetings or events. Of course, I couldn’t remember what anyone else wore, so why I thought they would remember what I wore remains a mystery to me to this day. Besides, nearly every entry started with “black pants,” since I had more clothing in black than Johnny Cash (raise your hand if you’ve heard me say that one before…).

People come up with their own tricks to help them remember things. Though I doubt the guy who invented the Post-It note had this in mind, I remember seeing many women leaving J&J at the end of the day with a string of Post-It notes stapled around the handles of their purses. I have friends who have Post-It notes on the dashboard of their cars. Writing things down helps – if you remember to take the paper or Post-It note with you.

My sister likes to write things down on the tiniest scraps of paper. When she is preparing a holiday meal, you’ll find every serving bowl with little scribbles that say “mashed potatoes.” Yet, inevitably, when we put the food on the table she’ll suddenly realize she forgot to make the peas (so that means one little bowl stands empty, except for the tiny scrap of paper with “peas” written on it).

I find it helpful to place things where I can’t miss them – like right in front of the garage door. If I have to take my laptop to a meeting, I’ll hang the bag from the doorknob, so I can’t miss it on my way out. The other thing that helps is doing things immediately when you remember them. How many times have I gotten out of bed in the middle of the night and written something down, or grabbed my passport at that moment, so I wouldn’t forget that I need it next month? I’d answer that question, but I can’t recall.

In fact, I wanted to write this essay for some time, and I would have, if I hadn’t forgotten about it.